Category: General

A Wish for the SUPERTRAIN

As you might have seen from my JFK-DCA DCA-LGA trip today to the lovely Washington D.C. metro area, I did a bunch of flying today which should have been on the SUPERTRAIN.

The problem was that I needed to go to both Annapolis and Washington DC very last minute. Not having the SUPERTRAIN meant that a trip which could (and should) have been undertaken with a combination of subway, metro and SUPERTRAIN became a game theory test between different transportation modes. Surprisingly, taking the Delta Shuttle was actually cheaper and half the time than taking Amtrak. Instead of 3 hours on the train it was 1.5 hours on the plane/waiting in the terminal. Carbon-spewing flight won the day. While I had to use taxis in New York City, I was able to use Washington’s Metro on the way to and from National Airport and from Annapolis to Washington DC.

The Northeast Corridor is the one area where the SUPERTRAIN can take advantage of existing density, mass transit and travel demand. Now if we just had half a trillion dollars laying around we could all take the SUPERTRAIN.

Sustainable Single-family Suburban Prototype: Terraform(a)

terraform(a) sectionterraform(a) section, originally uploaded by n:dL

By nocturnal design Lab, the Terraform(a) prototype is:

a sustainable single-family suburban prototype developed for the Mid-Western United States. Conceived as a modern hybrid of the rammed earth house and the sod house that once dotted the landscape of the Great Plains, this alternative to the traditional suburban tract home engages the landscape, blurring boundaries between the natural and built environments.

I am a sucker for prototypes and design solutions, but the main problem to Terraform(a) is that the required density for Walkable Urbanity is not present. Therefore, what makes the suburbs the suburbs, remains. All the ills of sprawl, low-density and lack of multiple transit opportunities remain.

Do the Suburbs Limit Political Interaction?

Endless SprawlEndless Sprawl, originally uploaded by Civil War Preservation Trust

All of this is to say that walkable neighborhoods and public spaces are very good for politics. As most of the country is suburban, it is very hard to find public spaces where politics can be conducted. Robocalls, TV ads, radio ads, direct mail, and phone banks are all proxies for a lack of civic culture, in which pestering voters with jackhammer-like messaging screaming IRAQ or TAXES takes the place of engaging with people in real conversations. This kind of politics is literally built into the fabric of the suburbs, which is one reason why certain types of authoritarian messaging works really well in both the Democratic and Republican parties. The web functions differently, based on varying levels of trust, but that is not how relating to the general electorate operates.

On Suburban Canvassing and the alienation of the suburbs.